Cynthia Pelayo has been making a very good name for herself mixing fairy tales and crime novels set in Chicago. I was a big fan of Children of Chicago so when I was pitched It Came from Neverland for review (Stephen King’s IT meets Peter Pan) I jumped at the chance for a review copy. I’m glad I did because the novel exceeded the unfair, high expectations I placed on it.
Since the story of Peter Pan has been part of our culture, Peter has often been cast as the hero, many people assume him to be the hero. But what if Peter is the villain? What if he is more than just “the boy who wouldn’t grow up” and something darker? A selfish, controlling, abusive entity who uses children to maintain its youth and discards them. There was one person to escape his powers of control: Wendy Darling.
1914, Wendy Darling works by day as a school teacher and by night, she assists soldiers who have returned home from the Western Front. There is one mysterious patient who despite all the care they’ve given him, is in a deep sleep, unable to wake up. One night, when he murmurs the words “Peter Pan,” Wendy is thrown back to a darker time, one that she wishes she could forget.
When one of her students goes missing, it brings back memories of when children went missing and were later found murdered in London many years ago. Wendy believes that Peter Pan, the entity that she believed killed those children, is back. She and her brothers had a close encounter with Peter Pan, after all. But her brothers only remember Peter Pan and Neverland as a fantasy of childhood games.
When another child goes missing and signs start to point to Wendy, Scotland Yard digs into old reports, finding that Wendy knew the names of all the children who had been killed. As Wendy tries to prove her innocence, she also has to find a way to stop Peter Pan once and for all.
Pelayo’s novel casts Wendy as a survivor, a victim of gaslighting, emotional, and psychological abuse. She is the protagonist and we se most of the story through her eyes. Back in London, Wendy is a teacher and helps soldiers… two things that drew her to Peter in the first place because Peter saw her as a surrogate mother. She fears the monster is still out there seeking her. But to speak of what happened to her all those years ago would bring some unwanted scrutiny because some of the Lost Boys who returned with her weren’t alive.
Peter is depicted as akin to a cult leader, a persuasive entity that bends others to its well. As the boy who never grew up, Peter is not an entity that has any kind of empathy, an inability to think beyond itself and only of its survival regardless of the evil inflicted upon others.
The Peter Pan story was always “there” for me… it wasn’t a story I was always drawn to, but it is such a pervasive enduring story that it seems every few years some kind of movie is made using Peter and Wendy as a launch pad. Of course I am a fan of the Spielberg-Robin Williams film Hook because, well, Robin Williams. What I found interesting as I was reading It Came from Neverland is that all the cues Pelayo took to really turn Peter into an evil entity are apparently in the original novel by J.M. Barrie. There’s illusions in Barrie’s novel of how Peter handles the Lost Boys if they decide to grow up, for example. That direct connection is just one element that makes Pelayo’s novel so great.
Peter Pan has often been depicted as something of a fae or faerie creature and going back to some of the original Fairy Tales, some of those non-human creatures are depicted as quite malicious. Monstrous, almost. Again, this Peter Pan… and maybe Barrie’s original vision of Pan has some of that… at least the mischievousness which is just a step or two, at most, away from malicious.
Bottom Line – Pelayo casting Peter Pan as a monster is very much in line and has logic connecting to the original story and the nature of the character.
Her depiction of Wendy as victim, survivor, almost a final girl who must overcome her tormentor to live a free life is enthralling and engrossing. The claustrophobic aura of the novel when Wendy is forced to interact with the police, and her fears of her past, pulled me into the story and gave me even more empathy for Wendy. I liked Wendy, I felt for her, and I wanted to see her destroy Peter Pan.
Pelayo has a way with words and enchanting/magnetic prose. Between the amazing characterization of Wendy and the prose, I was swept up in the spell of this novel and had blinders on for everything else. (Except maybe my dog who was sitting next to me on my love seat when I finished the novel, because well, she’s a big loving dog).
It Came from Neverland is a fantastic novel and will surely get a slot in my favorites / best novels of the year. This is the kind of novel that will connect very strongly with the most die hard of horror readers / fans while managing to have potential appeal to readers who don’t normally crossover into these dark tales. That isn’t an easy path to take, but Cynthia Pelayo tears down that road with impressive success.
Highly recommend.
© 2026 Rob H. Bedford
Paperback | Crooked Lane Books
June 2026 | 288 Pages
Excerpt: https://www.fangoria.com/exclusive-it-came-from-neverland-peter-pan-horror-novel/
https://www.cynthiapelayo.com/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Crooked Lane Books
